There's something deeply incongruous about lying in bed under the thick pall of a terribly scratchy throat, throbbing head and low-grade fever, while outside spring breezes tickle the chins of freshly bloomed yellow poppies and robins flit about the lawn, thrusting their red breasts before them. Flu, you are not my fair-weather friend. And apparently, neither are the great wafts of green pollen drifting through our screens. After swallowing a few tablespoons of last year's elderberry syrup and spritzing my cracked gullet with Portland Apothecary's Redroot & Licorice remedy, I am drinking vats of beet-ginger juice and throwing garlic into whatever I eat. In like a lion, out like a cranky bitch. Ah well.

On the bright side, I am back to posting after more than two weeks away, during which time I have indulged in spring things like wild watercress, ramp salt, green garlic and fistfuls of fresh asparagus, which I enjoyed for breakfast and lunch yesterday. We are moving into the season of crisp greens and lovely lettuces, and soon there will be peas and rhubarb and baby radishes and all manner of perky morsels to tempt our weary, winter-worn appetites.